The forge was a huge undertaking, with dozens of apprentices scurrying about, machining bullets with ancient stamp presses and even cruder tools. To his surprise, the whole operation happened in the shadow of an enormous clanking assembly that cranked out lots of perfectly serviceable rifle rounds - better in many cases than what the smiths produced with their hammering.

But when he asked Hesperid why they were handmaking rounds when they had a functioning machine, she looked at him strangely. “Because the machine has no Cosm.”

And then it clicked.

The rounds being manufactured by machine were vastly inferior to ones loaded with Cosm by their creators. The same way that an arrow could punch through his armor, it was Skills, not technology, that was dominant on this planet - and what Pike wouldn’t have given for an anti-material rifle to shake that paradigm up.

The truth was, his sidearm was nothing by Earth standards. It was a weapon of last resort, not anything a ground soldier would go into combat with. Let him bring down proper rifle, or stars help the poor savages, a railgun? He would be running this place in a week.

The apprentices were happy to show him around the workshop, eagerly demonstrating their techniques and tools. His reputation as a Machinist had them fawning over him, inviting him past the outer forges where sparks blew from furnaces and into the closed, lantern-lit depths of the operation. There were parts of the process that made Pike raise an eyebrow - dipping the metal into amber solutions saturated with floating sparks of light, and engraving each round with runes - but he assumed they were somehow vital to imbuing Cosm into the ammo.

Even more interesting was what replaced gunpowder. Small teams of alchemists huddled around tables, processing down yellow crystals cut by red veins, grinding it down to a consistent grain and carefully, painfully loading it into each shell.

But that was all kids stuff, handled by the skinny apprentices who scuttled around the workshop, always in motion, their hair unkempt and faces greasy. Thankless interns, by any name.

No, it was the guns that fascinated him - the guns were at once primitive and gorgeous, every aspect crafted with a lifetime of care and skill.

Most of the weapons he saw being made were a type of zip-gun resembling crossbows, with a lever-action that both loaded the round and drew back the string. Lifting one, he found the resistance in the lever was enough to make him sweat, due to the need to prime the crossbow portion of the gun. A rolling breach-block and an octagonal barrel made it somewhat similar to old Winchester cowboy rifles of early Earth.

He hefted it, admiring the tracery of running stags on the brass panels of the action. The real wood of the stock. The savage but satisfying weight. Pike had always loved old firearms, and he gratefully accepted the offer to take it out to the firing range, a proud smith puffing out his chest as the whispers of a Machinist examining his craft spread through the workshop.

Pike returned to the yard, where the guards had set firing targets at twenty, fifty, and a hundred feet. Going by the short ranges in play, Pike was guessing the crossgun in hand wasn’t the most accurate thing in the world.

The sight was an old-fashioned series of three brass posts. He settled down on one knee, brought his breathing to a slow with a repetition of the Spacing hypno-mantra, and lifted the stock to his shoulder. The bowstring was taut, lending the gun an air of poised readiness to violence.

His first shot blew the hundred foot target to pieces. The kickback was savage, smashing the butt against his shoulder as the crystal-gunpowder detonated. The impact was worse. The bullet flashed as it struck the haybale circle of the target, bursting open with an explosive light of compressed Cosm that sent charcoal splinters of hay spraying in all directions. Smoldering remains clung to the metal stand.

Polite clapping echoed from the balconies, as he gestured for them to move the targets further back. Two hundred feet, the full length of the courtyard.

Again, he turned the second one to splinters.

Finally, with the crowd starting to warm, he let Hesperid wrap a blindfold around his eyes. He heard them chuckling as the black fabric blotted out his vision, so he let the gun swing up until he heard them flinch, grinning as he called out, “Somebody tell me if I’m aiming the right way!”

As the cries of ‘Sarka!’ which he took to be ‘No!’ rang out, he casually spun the gun upside down, gripping it awkwardly.

“Now?” They couldn’t understand him, but they got the joke.

‘Sarka!’

He turned around, lifting the gun over his shoulder. Thankfully, the crystal-powder was quieter than the real stuff, or he’d be half-deaf for the day after this stunt.

“Now?”

“Tala!”

Pike grinned. He knew that one meant yes.

What they didn’t know was that the telemetrics on his suit were perfectly adequate to letting him shoot upside down, over the shoulder, blind-folded - anything. Targeting solutions were displaying under the dark of the blindfold, beamed into the lens of his eye by a tiny projector-node in the lower eyelid. A trajectory built from the past two shots arced over his shoulder and straight to the bullseye.

“Here goes nothing!”

The rip of the gun twisted awkwardly at his wrist, but the shot itself was beautiful. The crowd went flat silent as the gun bucked, launching its hand-made shell backwards, and the target blew apart in a burst of light and Cosm.

And then the cheering started.

Pike grinned himself stupid at the applause, at least until slender hands settled over his cheeks and he found himself being pulled into a kiss - teeth catching his lower lip in a gentle rake.

He pulled off the blindfold, his right ear ringing slightly, to find Hesperid grinning at him. Grinning back, he wrapped his arm around her waist.

But he wasn’t so distracted that he didn’t see the elf watching him from the smithy balcony. A tall, gaunt elf, with his golden hair braided through rings of black iron, wearing rich red robes embroidered with golden circuit board patterns. Kadra stood at his side, waving her four-fingered hand.

The elf turned back, stepping inside, and Kadra quickly scurried in at his heels.

If he wasn’t mistaken, Pike had just met the master smith of the workshop.